You’ve heard that strength training can help you lose weight. But what exercises should you do? Should you eat differently? How can you stay motivated to learn this whole new way of using your body? I answered these questions and much more in a video workshop with Sam Lomeli’s TipsOfTheScale.com community last week. Check it out: You may also be interested in the podcast interview I did with Sam last year about weight loss and strength training. Questions about how to get started with strength training? Visit {Read More…}

Barbell hip thrusts are a fantastic strength-training glutes builder, but you need to keep adding weight to the bar to progress. And even if you’re crazy motivated to build sexy glutes, it can seem intimidating to get under larger loads. Barbell hip thrusts are not for beginning trainees. You need to master glute bridges and hip thrusts in their various progressions before adding weight. If you’re not quite ready to use an Olympic-sized barbell with bigger plates that roll over your legs, see how to set up using {Read More…}

[Giveaway closed! Thanks to everyone who entered. See the winner here.] Pull ups will give you an athletic, strong back faster than any other exercise. They’ll also give you a badass self-confidence bump! But why can so few already-fit people do them? Getting to unassisted pull ups is all in the methodology, and I strongly believe the best way is by using pull-up bands. I know this firsthand as I’ve increased my pull ups to EIGHT and watched my clients crank out pull ups in {Read More…}

Everyone’s seen it: A gym-goer working hard to crush it but instead is standing in their own way. How? They’re using momentum to complete the reps instead of the power of their own muscles. We raise our eyebrows when we see someone swinging their body during bicep curls, but the truth is, you, too, might be using momentum without even knowing it. And it’s not even entirely your fault. Newton’s second law of motion, the Law of Acceleration, states that “the rate of {Read More…}

In this week’s roundup I’m sharing a few exercise videos that will help you rock your workouts. It’s not unusual to find reputable-looking videos demonstrating extremely poor form. That’s because a huge majority of exercise videos suck. It’s not just that they’re poorly made; many videos teach improper technique. At best, following their advice can slow down your progress. At worst, it can cause you to hurt yourself. Before I show you my favorite bent-over rows video and bonus technique for overloading your {Read More…}

You decide it’s time to update your weightlifting routine, so you spend oodles of time pouring over magazines and online resources to find the “best” exercises. You find a few exercises that look new and cool and they promise to sculpt those areas you want. So you start your new workouts and love them – for awhile. Until you realize your butt still looks the same and you’re not even breaking a sweat anymore. The problem with using random exercises in {Read More…}